Injury reports helpful to opponents?

Don't get me wrong, as a fan, I'd definitely prefer to get unambiguous injury information. But I'm hoping somebody can convince me this doesn't help opponents prepare. If our (so far this year) best deep threat is almost certainly not to play, doesn't that help Notre Dame scheme?

and who isn't injured is helpful to the other team. If they said that someone was 50% probable do you think that they just say "oh well he's not playing we don't have to worry about him"? No they still gameplan for that situation and if the scrub comes in well he's not very good.

I don't understand this logic so if someone could help me understand how the injury report is relevant that would be great. Thanks!

"I don't understand this logic so if someone could help me understand how the injury report is relevant that would be great. Thanks!"

(Coaches, please weigh in.) The idea is that if you know a player is not 100%, you can take advantage of him tactically. For example, if their starting corner has a bad ankle and can only turn quickly in one direction, you will try to get a stud receiver on him and turn him the wrong way. If an OL is dragging, you might make sure to hit him more and hope he can break down.

When I was in high school, an opponent's best lineman had a bum knee he was playing on. We weren't trying to injure him more, but we made sure to challenge him on every play.

If a guy is injured enough that he might not make it through the game, you'll want to prepare extra for his backup - who will have his own tendencies and weaknesses. Sure, it's a gamble by the coaching staff (he might get freak-injured in the middle of the game) but it's likely to pay off when you need to exploit the matchup.

In the NFL, injury information is very tightly regulated. The NFL is in real hot water ove the NY Jets/Brett Favre injury/non-injury situation. I believe the true motivation for their injury rules are to prevent skewed gambling lines due to unknown injuries, and consequently to prevent under-the-table trading of injury information among those running the books.